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Enough art galleries to choke a town

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Associated Press

The artists discovered this village in the early 1900s and put up wooden cottages where they could paint pictures of the shoreline and coastal pines. Then the art dealers arrived, with their silky scarves, flute-filled soundtracks and airy showrooms.

For a long time, plein-air painters and their patrons co-existed here profitably. But now galleries outnumber artists, and Carmel faces a clash between creativity and commerce that may be painfully familiar to residents in other scenic tourist spots across America.

Today, galleries selling everything from Impressionist landscapes to cartoon dog portraits make up one of every three businesses along Carmel’s stone walkways. In all, 105 stores sell art in this town of a little more than 4,000 residents. For a while, the city was approving a new gallery every week.

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“People are upset. They can’t go to a movie theater. They can’t buy socks in this town,” said Ross Arnold, who owns the Carmel Drug Store, the only shop of its kind. “You walk down the street and it’s gallery, gallery, jewelry store, gallery, gallery.”

While residents still talk about Carmel-By-The-Sea as if it were a village, its 1.1 square miles are also a major destination for the global golfing set. So when city leaders labeled the proliferation of galleries a “real and impending threat” late last year and virtually banned any new ones, outsiders took note.

Art may fill a human need, but too much of it threatens the town’s finances, said Mayor Sue McCloud -- since 2000, the 35 new galleries in town have added only $500 in sales tax revenues to the general fund.

That’s because California tax laws exempt tourists from paying sales tax on purchases they get shipped out of state. And whether they’re dealing in rare Renoirs or butterfly-shaped baubles, Carmel’s art galleries rely almost entirely on outside buyers.

Local governments in tourist destinations from Key West, Fla., to Aspen, Colo., also have found that it’s hard to live on art alone, but these and other cities can also bank on the bump in revenue from hotel stays, outdoor sports, nightlife and other goods and services. Carmel is a relative pauper in this regard, since its tiny downtown all but closes down at nightfall.

“People who buy original art tend to be fairly affluent,” said Paul Menter, Aspen’s finance director. “So while galleries are an important part of the retail mix, they don’t generate much tax.”

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It’s a problem many tourist towns encounter, said John Villani, who profiled the village in his book “The 100 Best Art Towns in America.”

“Artists are always the first to move to places that are seen as undesirable,” Villani said. “But once property values go up, it’s difficult for a place like Carmel to support creative businesses that are not directed toward feeding or selling objects to the tourists.”

Some veteran art dealers have a private, darker fear -- that high-end tourists who come for the art scene will soon realize that much of what they see is hardly worth the frame. Their worries seemed confirmed last month when readers of American Style magazine ranked Carmel two stops below Aspen as an arts destination.

Meanwhile, for tourists who come to walk on the beach and don’t care about art, “we were diminishing the diversity of why they would choose to come here,” McCloud said.

The near-moratorium approved in November was designed in part to support local artists. New galleries can request business permits only if they dedicate 80% of their space to the work of one artist, or if the gallery has a working studio, in use at least half the time its doors are open.

Gallery owner George Stern says the city would do better to limit the number of T-shirt shops and ice cream stores rather than see art as the enemy.

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“I just don’t get it,” said Stern, a prominent Los Angeles dealer whose gallery was the last to squeeze in before the ban. “The restrictions have the possible tendency of developing a provincial aspect to the work.”

In other words, the town should let the marketplace determine which of the many galleries will survive. But even if art is removed from a few prime storefronts, other small business owners might not be able to afford to return. Along Ocean Avenue -- where tourists can chose from a seemingly endless supply of look-alike pastel landscapes selling for as much as $8,000 each -- commercial rents have increased to as much as $30,000 per month, according to real estate broker Peter Baird.

While few dispute Carmel’s success as an international arts destination, local painter Dick Crispo is nostalgic for the town he knew -- a quiet artists’ colony filled with cheap hamburger joints and art supply stores.

“You can’t even buy a paint brush here anymore,” he said.

But Enid Sales, who has lived in Carmel on and off since 1933, hopes the ban will bring a welcome change.

“Maybe now I’ll be able to walk downtown and buy something useful,” she said.

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